NOTE: The Washington Times today published the article that appears below. However, all original punctuation was excluded, even quotation marks, most likely because of systemic glitches. These glitches now give the impression that I am genuinely calling the Kosovo war a war “against genocide”, and in other places where quotation marks are missing, the result is just plain plagiarism. The piece on The Times‘ website currently reads incomprehensibly, and in places seems to contradict the point of the article, starting with the title it was given, “Silence is Golden”. All documenting links were removed as well. How a piece could have been published in such condition by a professional outfit is beyond me. Below is the professional version of the piece, as I’d handed it in to The Times.

For possibly the first time in her career as a conservative commentator, Ann Coulter had nothing to say about a political issue.

“I have no opinion,” she told a student who asked her about Kosovo and Ukraine. “That may be the first time those words have passed my lips.”

During her hour-long speech to a crowd of more than a thousand last night in HUB Alumni Hall, though, Coulter spoke candidly about her opinions on a variety of controversial subjects ranging from the war in Iraq to global warming to terrorism.

The usual, in other words. The easy stuff. And on the easy, day-to-day stuff, every conservative loudmouth in the country has a strong and ready opinion. But on the fact that in the Kosovo giveaway of 2008 we’ve just repeated the Munich surrender of 1938 — nothing.

While Americans can’t be expected to have strong opinions on whether the Ukraine gets an invitation to NATO or not, the Kosovo question is a different story. So let me see if I have this non-opinion on Kosovo straight: The U.S. is aggressively creating another Muslim state in Europe, openly calling for a heightened Islamic presence on the continent, and Ann Coulter has no opinion.

In the case of Kosovo, it’s a Muslim state whose leaders and inhabitants have killed or cleansed most of the Christians (and Muslims who didn’t mind being part of a larger Christian nation) from its borders. But Coulter has no opinion.

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, investigators flew to Albania after discovering a cell there that was connected to the hijackers — and she has no opinion.

In the weeks before 9/11, six Albanian-American fundamentalists arrived in the Kosovo village of Skenderaj, telling locals that the U.S. would soon be attacked. And Ann Coulter has nothing to say about it. (Not coincidentally, Skenderaj was a stronghold during the 1998-99 war of America’s past and present ally, the KLA.)

Less than a year ago, four out of six jihadists arrested for planning to massacre American soldiers at Ft. Dix were Albanian — the weapons provider among them (Agron Abdullahu) having been sheltered at Ft. Dix during the 1999 resettlement process. And still Ann Coulter has no opinion on whether this kind of behavior deserves American-enforced independence for Abdullahu’s horde. That we fought alongside this former Kosovo sniper in Bill Clinton’s war of aggression is for some reason insignificant to this and all other pundits.

We’re well post-9/11, and George W. Bush has been replicating and completing a strong-arm war of might-makes-right started by Bill Clinton — whom Ann Coulter distrusts and despises — and it elicits a shrug from this opinionist.

After we helped the ultranationalist Albanians with the Kosovo leg of their jihad, they moved on like clockwork to destabilize Macedonia and southern Serbia using the same terrorist provocations they employed in Kosovo, in Macedonia winning U.S. support — but Ann has no opinion.

Bin Laden set his sights on, and traveled throughout, the Balkans in the 90s, meeting with Albanian leaders (as he did with Bosnian ones), and assigning al Qaeda capos to different areas there, including Ayman al-Zawahiri’s brother Mohammed. Today, America solidifies this radical base for bin Laden, while presiding over the construction of 400 new Saudi- and UAE-financed mosques amid systematic church destruction. But this isn’t significant enough for Ann Coulter to have an opinion on.

The U.S. is redefining the concept of the nation-state along ethnic boundaries, with implications for every region of the globe including Southern California and every other state of the Union that has majority ethnic enclaves, but don’t look to Ann Coulter to have an opinion on that.

The U.S. is dismantling principles of the international order that have guided and protected statecraft for sixty years, which is CURRENTLY being used as a precedent from India to Sri Lanka to Catalonia in Spain to the Galilee in Israel to Quebec to Vermont, but this isn’t opinion-worthy, apparently.

The American-backed “prime minister” of Kosovo oversaw the butchering of civilians for their organs during this war for “independence” and against “genocide” — among countless other creatively brutal exploits by the U.S.-anointed KLA — but Ann Coulter doesn’t have an opinion on that either.

Busy trying to out-clever one another on the election-oriented petty issue du jour, the commentators haven’t noticed that the bottom has just fallen out from under Western civilization before their very eyes, as the international order is dismantled under their noses.

Once again, as in 2001 when we decided to back Albanian rebels against the Westward-facing, multi-ethnic nation of Macedonia — which took in 400,000 Albanian “refugees” from Kosovo — we see that it’s possible for America to be at war without its public or the public’s “hard-nosed” messengers noticing. Indeed, if our war on behalf of Muslims is against the expendable Slavs. it’s more than possible. It’s applauded.

Never do our “thinkers” stop to ask: Why all the sweating by world powers — foremost by the U.S. — over such a small, seemingly insignificant Balkan province? Why the absolutist approach (e.g. Condi Rice: “Kosovo must be independent”; Nicholas Burns: “Independence is the only solution…”)? After all, everyone seemed to get the joke last June when George W. Bush found his only friend on the planet in Albania. The answer is that the United States of America is being blackmailed in Kosovo. The U.S., bitten by the Balkan bug, today serves as a mafia enforcer for the criminal gang that is Greater Albania. Such is the position we have allowed ourselves to be placed in.

Whether you like her or not, Ann Coulter is considered an informed American. Her “no opinion” on Kosovo speaks volumes about how much the rest of our populace knows or cares about this underappreciated catalyst for the demise of Western values and civilization. I’m reminded of the time I pitched a book project to a conservative imprint at a major publishing house, about the fallout and implications of America’s taking all the wrong sides in the Yugoslav wars. The editor replied, “Try a European publisher. Americans aren’t interested in other countries.”